


A Brand New Life (Is Down This Road)

by tay0720



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 19:50:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3990571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tay0720/pseuds/tay0720
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura knows what she wants, but Carmilla's positive she doesn't</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Brand New Life (Is Down This Road)

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the second person POV. That's just how it came to me and I ran with it

“Look, I’m not an idiot,” she says. “I know this can only end in a handful of ways, several of which include one or both of us dead.”

You flinch at the thought of her dead, lifeless. You want to vomit.

She notices instantly and grabs your hand, trying to quell your discomfort. It helps, at least a little. It always helps knowing she’s safe; lying next to you in bed or sitting through her classes or typing away on her computer.

“Carm, look at me,” she pleads softly, lightly touching your chin to guide your eyes to hers, and you can’t help but comply. Those eyes have become something of a safe haven for you.

“Laura-” you start, but true to form, she cuts you off.

“No. I know what you’re thinking.”

She probably does, actually. She knows how to read you remarkably well, which can be problematic but also beneficial. Such a strange experience…

“Just believe me when I say I know what I want. I’ve thought about it. I’ve argued myself in circles about it, and I always end up in the same place: I want you. I want us. I want now.”

Her voice rises and hits that high pitch she only reaches when she’s truly impassioned—her unswayable tone.

“We have all the time in the world to figure out ‘later,’ Carmilla,” she continues, gripping both of your hands tightly, and you bite your tongue. “Just have now with me.”

Every now and then she says things like that: things that reek of the naïve, provincial girl you first met. You want nothing more than to protect her from the bad things and people you know are in this world, yet you know, deep down, you can’t. She’s too damn stubborn sometimes to let you, and you don’t want to hinder her in any way from growing—there’s a short joke in there, but now’s definitely not the time to make it. And then there is the multitude of things that even you can’t protect her from.

Mortals have so many failings; the worst of which is probably their invincibility complex.

For now, though, you sigh and you nod. Unable to deny her what she wants.

*/*

You’ve never been in it this deeply, this love thing.

That’s not to say that what you felt for Ell was less than what you feel for Laura. The two—both the people and the circumstances—are just… _different_.

Both were or are innocent in ways, and had/have good hearts. But where Ell was more reserved, Laura is outspoken. Where Ell was more cautious and apprehensive, Laura is headstrong.

Even though you were closing in on 200 years of existence when you met Ell, in ways you were still very much like the 18 year old you were when you died and Mother turned you. Hell, you were stupid enough to believe that you and Ell could’ve escaped Maman’s reach. You didn’t think of things like consequences, you only saw upside. You only saw Ell.

Watching the girl you love be dragged off, screaming and crying, to her demise paired with several decades of being locked in a coffin full of blood gave you plenty of reason (and time) to [over]analyze and reevaluate everything.

Ever since, you consider the consequences. You daren’t think of anything but the downside. You try not to care about anyone.

But then Laura Hollis was thrown into your life, like some kind of sick, beautiful cosmic joke.

And even though you tried not to, you care. You care, and you help, and you fall. You fall _hard_. Quite literally with that last one since you jump into a pit of unknown depth to try and kill that stupid anglerfish your Mother had been serving.

So, you stay at Silas a while longer. You attend classes sporadically enough to avoid being dropped and still pass with minimal effort. You and Laura—and Laura’s friends, you guess—fight off whatever preternatural issues and/or beings spring up. And when Laura graduates you ask her father, who had been incredibly distrustful of you for the first year and a half you and Laura were together, if he would be ok with you taking Laura on a trip.

Not that either you or Laura actually needed his permission, but you felt it only fair to ask since he wouldn’t be spending summer break with his daughter like he’d probably hoped.

\--

You take her all around Europe; to places you’ve frequented over the years, places less traveled by tourists, anywhere she sees on the map that piques her interest. She documents the whole thing with the GoPro LaFontaine and Perry got her as a graduation gift. She writes travel pieces and puts them on a blog.

When she breaks her arm after she slips down the steps of the Vatican—the irony isn’t lost on you—you add one more stop to your itinerary.

\--

Your family’s plot sits at the back of a small cemetery on the side of Styria opposite Silas. Little remains of most of the larger headstones; damaged through the years by weather, vandals, and supernatural disasters.

You hadn’t ever intended on bringing her here, but the reminder of her mortality is at the front of your brain constantly lately.

She kneels in front of your grave and traces a few of the letters carved into the stone and sighs, leaning back.

“Why did you bring me here, Carm?” she asks, looking out into the field instead of at you, her voice sounding tired.

“Because you need to face reality, Laura.”

She stands and tries to push past you, but you wrap her in your arms.

“Carmilla, let me go!”

She squirms, but you’re physically stronger than she could ever be.

“Laura, you need to accept this. The only reason I’m not rotting in the ground is because Mother turned me. I didn’t have a choice, but you do. And I know you don’t want this life!”

“Don’t tell me what I do and don’t want! You don’t-” she continues to squirm, so you release your grip. She turns around, tears welling in her eyes. “You don’t know!” she screams and pushes your shoulders, arm in cast and all, as if to punctuate her point.

You let her scream and cry and push for as long as she needs.

And when she finally collapses, you catch her.

“Why can’t now just be enough, Carm?” she asks you later that night as you lie entwined in bed. “Why is it always about later?”

“Because you won’t be here for my later,” you whisper brokenly after she falls asleep.

*/*

Laura dies while working on a story in Germany five years later.

A car accident, you hear.

According to the coroner’s report, she fell asleep at the wheel and the car went off the road.

You haven’t seen her since a week after the cemetery incident. You wrote her a note saying how much you loved her, but that you couldn’t bear to be the reason she gives up her dream and, essentially, entire life. She needed a long, fulfilling life and to be with someone who would be able to grow with her.

You wrote her that note, left it on your pillow as she slept, and did what you do best—you ran.

You haven’t seen her, and now you never will.

To this day you still don’t know whether that was the most selfless or selfish thing you’ve ever done. Probably somewhere in the middle.

\--

You track down LaFontaine to tell you where Laura’s father had her buried after months of trying on your own and coming up empty.

LaF is reluctant, because they heard the story. They had to listen to Laura cry through the phone. Ultimately, though, they cave. Maybe because they know you did love her with everything you had. Maybe because they know you could break every bone in their hands and that isn’t helpful when trying to work in the lab. Or, perhaps, they see how pathetic you look and take pity.

So you go.

You bring her cookies. You trace a few of the letters of her name. You hate yourself even more.

\--

You come back once a year; not on her birthday or the day of her death, but on what was once your anniversary.

You never understood sentimentality or why humans were so endeared to it until Laura.

Sometimes you wonder if you had known she would be taken so soon, would you have still left her as you did? You don’t even need to think about your answer.

*/*

One year, decades later, you arrive to find someone else standing at her headstone.

For a moment you think, perhaps, LaFontaine or Perry had a child. But as you approach, silent as a still night, you notice the hair, the height. You pick up the scent.

“Hello, Carmilla.”

Your heart, were it still able, skips. You haven’t heard her voice in so long.

“Laura…”

For a moment you think this has to be a ghost—with your history at and connection to/with Silas, it wouldn’t really surprise you. When she turns her head, you see she looks exactly as she did when you left. Tentatively, you take a few steps towards her.

She waits; doesn’t move, other than turning her body wholly to face you.

“You’re a hard girl to track down,” she says simply when you’re in front of her properly and glances down, noticing the bag of cookies in your hand. “For me?"

You nod dumbly as she takes the bag and pulls out a cookie, biting into it.

“How are- How is-”

You can’t even complete a sentence and she smirks around another bite, finishing the small treat.

“We need to talk.”

\--

You end up in a little café in town.

You order a tea while she orders a hot cocoa.

 _Of course she does_ , you think. Because she’s Laura.

“I hated you for so long,” she tells you. “At least, I tried. More than anything I was just angry that you were trying to decide my life for me when all along I’d been telling you what I wanted.”

She catches you up, starting from about a month after you left.

The travel blog she made during your European adventure garnered the attention of several publications, so she was able to throw herself into work, to distract herself from the pain of not being able to at least say goodbye to you properly.

The charm of producing travel pieces wore off quickly, so she got back into investigative journalism—her version, anyway. She looked into paranormal occurrences, wrote about murders and sacrifices of decades, centuries past—anything to help fill the hole that had been eroding in her heart.

“Nothing helped,” she sighs.

It took a few years, but she found a witch. The witch found a ritual. There was blood and fire and screaming and pain.

And then, a few days later, she had her accident.

She rose three nights later.

“I spent the first 30 years going from small village to small village, trying to get my thirst under control.”

You flash back to your first century as a vampire, remembering how Maman practically required you to overindulge and then would reprimand you in the harshest ways—like training a dog, you surmise.

“I spent the rest of the time looking for you,” she continues quietly. “I went back and forth so many times about whether I hated you or not, whether I could forgive you or not...”

You lift your eyes up from your now cold tea and look at her, _really_ look at her.

Outwardly she’ll pass for a 20 something, probably even younger than that. Her eyes, though, give her away. They’re tired and yearn to be done searching for what’s been missing for so long.

“And what did you finally land on?” you ask, carefully.

She mulls you over for what feels like an eternity.

“I’m still not sure,” she says, never breaking eye contact. She reaches for your hand, gently brushing her fingers over yours. “But we’ve got some time to figure it out.”

And she smiles, genuinely. Her eyes, those ones that felt like home to you for so long and yet so brief a time, brighten and relax. You feel the corners of your mouth twitch and strain—it seems like forever since you last smiled.

“We can focus on now,” you tell her. “We can get to later another day. Right now is enough.”


End file.
